Unshelved Reading Challenge
host: Becky of Becky’s Book Reviews
dates: February 1, 2009 – June 1, 2009
books required: 3

Audio books welcome. Blog not required. Overlaps with other challenges allowed. Lists not required. But books must come from their archives. Remember, new books/strips are being added all the time.

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© Becky Laney of Becky’s Book Reviews

Option A: Read authors A to Z. Commit to reading 26 books theoretically speaking.
Option B: Read titles A to Z. Commit to reading 26 books theoretically speaking.
Option C: Read both authors A to Z and titles A to Z (52 books; this is the challenge Joy created)
Option D: Read internationally A to Z (books representing 26 different countries) (The books could be from international authors (writers from that country); however, it’s fine if a book is only set in that country. If need be, instead of countries one could use cities, states, regions, etc. The idea is to use proper place names. If you’d like you could even use a few fictional countries.)
Option E: Read 26 Alphabet books. Embrace your inner child and go visit the children’s section!

General rules:

How strict is the 26 or 52? I know it isn’t always easy to find those difficult letters. The thought of finding the X’s (for example) might scare folks away. It shouldn’t! I’m a merciful host! (Ask anyone!)

If you want to give the X’s a go… For authors, try to find an X in the first name, middle name, or last name. For titles, it doesn’t have to be the starting word. Try to find an X somewhere in a title, and it’d count in my book.

Still can’t find a book for the letter you need? I’ll take your word for it. I’ve been there. I know. If your library doesn’t see the need to order books just because it starts with an X, then I don’t blame you for not wanting to special order a book that you may or may not enjoy. You gave it your best, don’t feel bad. You can still make this challenge work for you.

Don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations. Look at the previous site. Ask other participants. Or ask me, your host. I may not have the “right” recommendation for every letter, but working together, I bet you’ll find something that interests you.

Audio books count in my opinion. If you take the time to listen to books, then that should count towards something.

What about rereads? I don’t have a problem with rereads. I would hope that you’d want to mix it up a bit and read some new authors, new titles, etc. But I’m not going to require that by any means.

What about children’s books? Children’s books and YA books count along with adult fiction and nonfiction of all sorts. (Poetry and plays too. Short stories count if they’re in a collection.) I don’t see a need to discriminate between “adult” and “kiddie” books. Even picture books can count if you like. Though try to use them in moderation. I used a few picture books to get tricky letters this year.

Overlaps are allowed with other challenges. In fact, you’d be a bit silly not to take advantage of this!

Representing the dead white guys, we’ve got John Steinbeck and Daniel Defoe.

And representing the very very best in current YA literature we’ve got Sarah Dessen and Scott Westerfeld. Those two fall into the category of the best of the best of the best.

To sign up for any of these challenges, click their names. I *know* that the link color is hard to distinguish at times from the regular text. But the links are there.

All FOUR challenges have the start date of January 1, 2009. (All likewise end on December 31, 2009). Two books are required per author. Audio books are welcome. (Some movies apply as well. But not for all the challenges.)

© Becky Laney of Becky’s Book Reviews

This is the NEW home of the Celebrate the Author reading challenge. This is the second year of the challenge, and I am pleased to be hosting it once again. I hope you will join me in 2009 as we read and celebrate authors in their birth month!

More about the challenge:

It is a twelve month challenge. January – December 2009.

The challenge is designed to “celebrate” author birthdays. Choose one author for each month of the year. Read at least one book a month. 12 authors. 12 birthdays. If you like, you can read MORE than that. If you’re really obsessive, you might want to “celebrate” all 52 weeks of the year. (But even I am not THAT zealous!) The challenge is designed to ‘celebrate’ the special bond–the connection–that occurs between the author AND the reader as well as the connection between readers. It is very easy to “bond” with other readers over certain works, certain authors, etc. To find out author birthdays, visit these helpful sites:

Author birthdays by date (pdf), author birthdays by name (pdf), kidsreads.com, teenreads.com, author birthday directory, etc.

Or conduct google searches of your own. (Hint: typing the authors name, a “+” and the word ‘birthday’, tends to work if you assume that wikipedia gets such things right.)

You can choose picture books, poetry books, early readers, chapter books, fiction for middle grades, fiction for teens, adult reads, nonfiction, whatever you want. You could choose 12 picture books. You can read books in or out of your comfort zone.

You might want to make a list and choose alternatives for each month…that way you can narrow it down as you go. And you do NOT have to choose a book until the very moment you’re ready to start reading. Just pick a handful of authors.

And here’s the secret. If you change your mind, just be sure to change your list to reflect that change. I don’t care how many times you change your list.

Why make a list at all? Good question. It’s not that I want you to stick to your list. I don’t care if you change it. I don’t need to see it in advance. But I mention lists because I think–and this could be me–that it is easier to visit those sites and jot down a few authors per month to give you ideas then it is to wait until the last minute and try to figure out which birthday is when and what counts etc. But if you want to be completely spontaneous then that’s fine with me!!

This year the round ups will be here on this wordpress site. You’ll be leaving links to your reviews. If you write reviews that is. Or you’ll be leaving comments to say what you read.

To sign up for this challenge, please leave a comment. Thank you!

This blog is all about challenge announcements, challenge round-up posts, challenge wrap-ups. I’d also *LOVE* to highlight participants in their reading journey. Perhaps, I’ll choose a few per month (or maybe even per week) to highlight. To brag on. To show some link love.

Feel free to leave comments!

So since I can’t say no, I’ve learned a few tricks on how-to-stay-sane. I thought I’d share just in case some of my buddies are feeling overwhelmed and despairing of their inabilities to say no. At the very least, you can join together and say at least I’m not her.

1) create your own “scary-but-true” list where you keep track of how many challenges you have going.

name of challenge:
host:
dates:
books required:

2) Have at least one place where you have all the links to your challenges bookmarked. This might be in the file above. Or it could be in a browser bookmark folder. Or it could be on your blog’s sidebar in a special link section. I feel it essential to keep these links segregated from just your regular blogroll.

3) Consider having a special page (if you’ve got wordpress) or an additional blog (like if you have blogger) to keep track just of your challenges. I normally blog in blogger. But I started a wordpress blog just to keep track of my challenges because I liked the format and the options available there. I think this is important because you can then have one place where all your lists are collected together. You can also use the search option to find certain books. I didn’t originate this idea of having a separate blog just for challenge lists. I copied many others. But it works really well.

4) Use tags when writing posts. If a book counts towards a challenge, I will use the name of that challenge as a tag. If a book counts towards five challenges, then list all five. For example, “Once Upon A Time Challenge II” and “Spring Reading Thing” and “A to Z Challenge.”

5) This is perhaps the MOST important thing I’ve learned in the past three months. And again, it’s not completely original. But here is my big trick. For each challenge, start a post and title it Whatever-the-challenge-is Completed. If the challenge ends in October, use your “post options” feature to date that entry for October 31. As each book you read for that challenge is completed, then open up that post and create a link to your review. (But remember to save as draft instead of publishing!) That way, you keep track of how many books you’ve read. When it comes time for the challenge to end, there is no fuss about it. No scrambling at the last minute to tie all those posts together. No rush to count up to see if you’ve read enough books.

6) Depending on your challenges, you might consider doing daily, weekly, or monthly maintenance. Checking your lists to see what you’ve read, and what you still need to read. If you’ve got a list organized in chronological order. The sooner the challenge ends, the higher priority it may receive when it comes time to choosing your next book.

7) To stay sane, remember not to force it. If you really really really don’t want to read something, then don’t. It doesn’t matter how many challenges a book is good towards if reading it is going to drive you crazy. That book might suit you better a month or two from now. Or you might end up substituting (if possible) another book in its place altogether. But always remember you can STILL exercise the Readers Bill of Rights even if you’re a challenge-addict.

Readers’ Bill of Rights (Daniel Pennac)

1. The Right to Not Read
2. The Right to Skip Pages
3. The Right to Not Finish
4. The Right to Reread
5. The Right To Read Anything
6. The Right to Escapism
7. The Right to Read Anywhere
8. The Right to Browse
9. The Right to Read Out Loud
10. The Right to Not Defend Your Tastes

8  ) Be forgiving and generous towards yourself. Perhaps this is more of an attitude than a tip. I sometimes hear that people dislike challenges because they don’t like the idea of not having the freedom to read what they want when they want to read it. Being challenge-addicted doesn’t have to be stressful. I think sometimes folks come to it with the mindset that it’s like a diet instead of a lifestyle. (You must do this, this, and this. You must do it now. You must not do this or that. And above all else, this is off limits.) But if you approach it with a que sera sera attitude, nothing can tie you down.

9  ) Remember it’s all about pleasure. Reading is fun. Reading is pleasurable. Blogging is pleasurable. Making new friends, keeping old ones. Finding new books for the TBR pile. All very good things. There is nothing about challenge work that should be UNpleasant. It’s an experience. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a journey you take with friends new and old.

10) Know yourself. Trust yourself. If a particular challenge gets to be too tough, don’t be afraid to back out. But don’t be too eager either. The world doesn’t end if you don’t finish a challenge. Nothing bad will happen if you don’t reach your listed goal. You might surprise yourself along the way.

Bonus: Overlap as much as possible. Have a book count for more than one challenge. In some cases, you might have a book count in five or six.